‘The Big Lebowski’ Syndrome
Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by kchristieh in parenting
At lunch yesterday, a friend and I discussed how to keep our sons focused and motivated. I told her that many of our fears could be summed up in three words: ‘The Big Lebowski.’ This 1998 Coen brothers movie starred Jeff Bridges as Jeff Lebowski, aka The Dude, an unemployed Los Angeleno who gives new depth to the term “slacker.”
My timing was perfect, for today’s NY Times notes in “Dissertations on His Dudeness” that,
“The Big Lebowski” has spawned its own shaggy, fervid world: drinking games, Halloween costumes, bumper stickers (“This aggression will not stand, man”) and a drunken annual festival that took root in Louisville, Ky., and has spread to other cities. The movie is also the subject of an expanding shelf of books, including “The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers” and the forthcoming “The Tao of the Dude.”
Where cult films go, academics will follow. New in bookstores, and already in its second printing, is “The Year’s Work in Lebowski Studies,” an essay collection edited by Edward P. Comentale and Aaron Jaffe (Indiana University Press, $24.95).
If academics are taking it seriously, perhaps we should, too.
My friend had never seen the movie, so I advised that she watch it with her children by her side and see what discussion it prompts. The danger, of course, is that a viewer could choose to emulate The Dude. At least I consider that to be a danger. Maybe I’m too uptight. Maybe I’m paranoid because I live in L.A. But this is not my vision for my children.
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